Sounds like you're piling too much on your plate.

I'm sure I've written about this before but I can't find it. What I did find though is that hubski likes the physical object compass and the philosophical object moral compass. But I digress.

There are infinite shiny things to grab your attention. Whether they're physical objects, like a new car, an Apple watch (ha - only kidding), physical accomplishments like getting healthy, losing weight or waking up early, or mental accomplishments, like learning a new language. musical instrument, writing a book, being content or happy. They never end and so obviously you need to choose which to pursue. But how to choose?

Compass > Clock

There isn't enough time to accomplish everything. The only alternative is to cut down the number of your goals and to focus on only those goals which are the most important to you. The two tricks here are to choose your goals wisely and relentlessly, incessantly stop paying attention to the endless other goals your mind will bring up.

Everyone has different ideas about what's important. You need to sit down quietly with yourself and ask yourself what's really, seriously important to you. This is extremely hard. You'll no doubt need some techniques to help you with this. Here are a couple for starters, but look for others along the way, try them out and see if they're useful.

Technique 1: Take some time (15-30 minutes) to think and write down anything resembling a medium or long term goal or ambition for you.

Cross out all but four +/- 1. What's left are your cardinal compass points that you use to guide you through life.

This can be difficult, but if you are finding it difficult to decide what to cut and what to keep, you should look to your intuition or your subconscious. For example if you find it difficult to choose between 2 things, toss a coin. If it's literally impossible to choose between 2 things then a coin toss is as good a way as any. But pay very careful attention to your feelings when you get the result. If your immediate reaction is negative it's really highlighting your attachment to the other choice. In other words, you've just uncovered your hidden desire. Go with that, because deep down that's what's more important to you.

Technique 2: Close your eyes and imagine what your own funeral will be like. Imagine it in as much detail as you can - where is it - what can you see near you, medium distance and far away. What can you hear in the foreground... in the background. What can you smell, who is there, what are they wearing? Make it as real as possible. Most importantly, what are people saying about you and your life? It's probably going to be painful because apart from a few egomaniacs you will probably imagine plenty of negative things. Never mind, embrace that mental pain because that it's telling you where your life is drifting away from where you really want it to be. Now choose four +/- 1 things you would want people to say about you?

You need to do lots of things to survive and thrive and they can't be ignored, but when you aim for something new, just make sure they align with your compass and don't lead you elsewhere.

Every single day, you need to re-focus your mental attention away from whatever leads you astray, in particular when it's another interesting looking goal. That's not to say you can't have quests and adventures along the way, that's the whole purpose of life. Just make sure they align with your compass.

Your mind will throw plenty of shiny, new goals at you. They're all excess mental baggage. You'll need to do this continually. There is an uncomfortable truth that whatever you pay attention to, grows. Positive or negative, when you feed it attention, it gets stronger and greater. Pay attention to something else. This is another incredibly difficult task. With practise it gets easier though.

The human mind is complex and changeable - what seems important one day is less important the next, what to speak of months and years later. You can and should repeat this type of exercise and re-calibrate from time to time, for example every year or two, but the idea is to try and find anchor points that don't change very much and use that to help you steer your way through life.

I have a limited amount of fucks to give as well so I tend to pick my top 3 things to focus on. Three is a good number, it's not to high that you feel overwhelmed but it's not to low so you don't feel like you aren't doing enough. Also I have an app that tells me when to do everything because I'm so incredibly bad at routine and self discipline that I need my phone to nag me. The way I see it, the robot overloads have already taken over.